terrydtx

No there is a charge for any extra lobster I think $16 plus tips.

That's our new go to cruise line too!

Our journey with Celebrity exactly. A couple of things you forgot on your list of changes: *Drinks and More package gone *Raising daily gratuities to highest among mainstream cruise lines, then removing them from AI

They eggs and sauce make the tortillas very soft and easy to cut with a fork.

Yes and many cruise critics consider Oceania to have the best cuisine at sea.

I wore a tux on my first HAL cruise on the Volendam in 2007 and have not worn it since. I hope the cruise industry never goes back to formal, I enjoy the current country club casual as it is more comfortable in hot weather and cold weather. Here in San Antonio, TX we have so far 61 days over 100F this summer and I haven't been out of my shorts for months.

I wear the same on dressy night as I do any other night. Golf slacks and a golf shirt (with collar) or possibly a Tommy Bahama Hawaiian print shirt that buttons up. I retired in 2020 and all my suits and sport coats went to Goodwill. In Alaska I might wear a nice pair of designer type of jeans. While many men get away with it, I never would wear shorts or a T shirt in the MDR on any night. We did Alaska in 2019 and I saw everything from shorts to tuxes. I remember one older man who wore the same "farmer" type overalls ever night and I thought that was inappropriate.

Last year when we moved our New Zealand cruise from March to January, on same ship same itinerary it was considered a new booking and we lost $200 ($100pp) of our deposit for rebooking, but we picked up a better price because of a sale going on at the time.

If you needed better WiFi on Celebrity that would also have been an upgrade out of pocket. This year with all the Celebrity changes to the negative we took off our Celebrity blinders and now see the cruising world totally different. After our first Retreat cruise in 2019 we thought Celebrity was going to be our cruising home for a long time.

I agree, why continue with Celebrity and we will not. We are going to most likely book that Oceania cruise and Oceania has a 100% refundable deposit. Also the Oceania prices include all taxes, fee and port charges another plus for them.

When we booked our HAL 11 night cruise next August from Boston, we looked at Celebrity as they also had a 11 night cruise from Boston. The Celebrity SS was over $8000pp so we looked at doing an Aqua Class which with AI was about $4800pp. On HAL we booked their highest category Vista Suite for $4400pp with the early booking premium Have it all promo and with Club Orange. We get premium drinks, Premium Wi-Fi, all tips, $200 OBC, $200pp shore excursions credit, and 2 specialty restaurants credit. Club Orange gives us priority boarding and tendering, enhanced dining with extra special entrees every night, and a CO concierge and several other benefits. The decision to go with HAL was a no brainer.

It will be interesting to see if the price of a Sky Suite drops by $922 or $461pp for a 7 night cruise, anything less is a price increase.

I must be confusing you with another CC friend. We are done with Celebrity after our 2 B2B cruises in January. The Retreat product we bought into in 2019 is not the same now and with ridiculous future costs of suites we would be stupid for not booking on a more premium or luxury line. I am also looking at Regent and Silversea, but we have 2 HAL and 1 Oceania cruise booked in the next two years. We booked the 2025 Oceania South America cruise after Celebrity pulled out of SA and we saved money and got 18 nights on O VS 14 nights on X. Actually Celebrity did us a favor by pulling out of SA. We had booked the Oceania cruise and the Celebrity Equinox SA cruise to get the cabins we wanted with the intention of deciding which one to keep in 2024. We would have lost part of our Celebrity deposit and the rest would have been a FCC. Now we got it all back to our CC after they were canceled. Oceania has a 100% deposit refund up to 6 months from the cruise date.

I am trying to remember but didn't you do an Oceania cruise earlier this year? If you did what are your thoughts on them VS Celebrity?

Moving a cruise to another is considered a new booking and if done after Oct 4th you would only be able to get the current AI program at that time less the grats.

HAL does that with their AI equivalent Have It All (HIA) they will run sales with included Grats. Also they do an early booking HIA that includes the premium Wi-Fi, premium drinks and gratuities, we got this for our Canada NE cruise next August.

Also consider all future Retreat cruises booked after Oct 4th will not include paid gratuities and OBC. That makes a much bigger difference too.

It is good to have choices and if any one cruise line fit everyone's needs and wants there wouldn't be the need for more than one. One other thing to consider with Oceania, there published prices includes all taxes, fees and port charges which are getting more and more expensive.

Since 2019 we have only booked Sky Suites with Celebrity and when I looked at the O prices they are considerably less than a Celebrity SS on a cost per day basis. Being retired we are able to travel as long as we want and we do much longer sea and land trips. 37 days last year in Italy and Greece, 21 days next month on the Apex and land in Greece, 34 days in January in Australia with a B2B cruise and 13 land days. Both HAL and Oceania do longer cruises, which we prefer, Celebrity is doing too many 7 days and it is hard to find anything longer than 12 days without doing a B2B.

We thought the same thing about booking in Celebrity Retreat but after 4 of them we have not seen any of those attitudes and in fact we have made many friends while in the Retreat. When we booked our 2025 Oceania Marina cruise we started monitoring the Oceania CC forum and I have not seen any of those attitudes in the people who post there. In fact, I was surprised how many are ex Celebrity cruises are there now. Some of them refer to Oceania as the Celebrity refugee line.

With the old AI in a way the grats were built into the price and still I heard people trying to remove them and being told it was not possible.

Go look at the long lines at guest services on the last day of a cruise some are there to fix billing issues but many are there to remove the auto gratuities. It is shameful IMO.

One thing I forgot about Oceania, the prices quoted INCLUDE all taxes, fees and port charges, which makes them even more competitive.

HAL does IMO the best job of any Cruise Line in Alaska. We have been on that ship and she is a very nice ship. It has our favorite specialty restaurant of any cruise line, Tamarind, and IMO the food in MDR is head above X after all the cuts in X MDR. We are doing the California Coastal Cruise in November in one of the newer HAL ships, Koingsdam.

Which ship on HAL? You will like HAL and the Suite comes with Club Orange. We have sailed with both Hal and X but we had gravitated more to X but with all the changes in Sky Suites we are going back to only cruising with HAL and Oceania.